Karl-Henning Rehren

Quantum stress-energy tensors without action functional

The stress-energy tensor describes (among other) the coupling of matter
to gravity.

Classical stress-energy tensors are usually derived by variations of the
action. While already for Maxwell, the canonical formula gives an
asymmetric and non-gauge invariant result, the Hilbert prescription (by
variation of the metric) gives the correct symmetric and gauge-invariant
stress-energy tensor.

String-localized fields of higher spin: massless limit and stress-energy tensor

"Lifting" the massless limit of Wigner representations of higher spin to
the associated local quantum fields, encounters several obstructions due
to the well-known conflicts between Hilbert space positivity, covariance and
causality.
In a unified setting using "string-localization", these conflicts can be
resolved, and details of the decoupling of the degrees of freedom can be
studied.
Joint work with Jens Mund, Bert Schroer
(arXiv:1703.04407 and 04408)

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